Stuff is only stuff

I have come to realize something that upon realization begins to annoy me more and more and more.

Advertising ruins EVERYTHING!

I've always been super annoyed by tv commercials, not because they interrupt my viewing experience, but because they are SO annoying! They are always significantly louder in volume than whatever I was watching, and they are almost always extremely stupid, making me feel like the entire human race has the sense of humor of the average Jr. high class.

Then they decided to ruin the Internet. Remember when popup adds started? You'd just be innocently browsing the web at 32kbps and then suddenly you've got a screen full of porn ads! Thank goodness our browsers have done all they could to put an end to that! So things went back to normal, which meant 3/4 of the page you were visiting was taken up by ads and the other 1/4 was the thing you actually meant to be viewing. Then came the page redirect ad. You know the one, you click a link, and before you get to see that page you are sent to some random advertisement which, if you are lucky, has a link that says "skip this ad" in 6 pt font.

Recently, though, things have become OH so much more annoying! How many times a week do you jump because suddenly a page yells "CONGRATULATIONS YOU'VE WON..."? How about when you are scanning an article, using the mouse as a reading guide, and then you hit a magic word and up pops some random bubble in the middle of the screen, blocking your article with an ad, and if your very unlucky, it will be a video ad that is super loud. Lately I've been most annoyed by the side column video ads. The most obnoxious of which won't let you pause or mute until at least the first video is complete. Most people aren't aware of this, but all video ads are supposed to have mute button, and are not supposed to start playing until you click something according to the the international standards of internet advertising etiquette.

It's not just the internet either. Remember when you would go to a movie, and before the movie there were movie trailers? I love movie trailers. Ok, so there still usually are, but there's usually only a couple. For a while theaters were doing movie trivia until the trailers started, which I thought was cool, but now you get 30 minutes of local ads, 15 minutes of national ads, and 5 minutes of trailers. Theaters are already in trouble, they really should learn now NOT to drive away their patrons.

What pushed it over the edge was magazine ads. I recently subscribed to a bunch of different magazines. I almost can't stand reading them because of all the stupid ads! First of all there are the subscription cards. I ALREADY SUBSCRIBED! Then there are the regular ads. I understand the need to sell advertising, but articles should take up the majority of the magazine, not ads. But what really is driving me nuts is this new cardstock ad thing they are doing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the advertisements are made of paper about 20 times thicker than the regular pages, so if you're just flipping pages you inevitably land right on the advertisement, so then you have to flip back to find what you're looking for! OH, more specific to health and fitness magazines, there are the bogus article ads. These are ads that look like an actual article, they make them look real interesting, but if you read it its just common knowledge stuff ending with "do all this and take our pill and you'll have a six pack tomorrow!" bloody scam artists!

Advertising is so in your face all the time! We've gotta find a way to make it stop because it is completely out of control. I would really like to know how little of the time we spend awake that we are completely free from some kind of advertisement. I think the number would sicken us if we were aware of it.